Though he desperately refuses the conformities of modern novel tropes, George acknowledges he's just the same as every book character. A side character that is. Studying his way into writing a hit novel George has to master the ups and downs of his...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"I hate the way you love me. And I hate that I still care." Friend Gracie Abrams
⚠️ slight mention of past domestic abuse⚠️
George
Around the age of sixteen is when Dream and I shifted out of orbit. There happens to be a fight that is far too blurry to remember now and it tossed out our entire balance. At sixteen I was more or less a basket case of new raging hormones, unexplainable feelings, and parents who grew more aggressive with old age. Yelling turned to slaps and outbursts turned to locked doors and a restricted life.
I know my home wasn't healthy, I'd known since I was old enough to have my own thoughts. It doesn't mean I didn't wish for it to be different, to wish one day they'd get their shit together. Getting it together was never possible, but how could it be with my mother's temper and my stepdad's need to drink away his liver?
The only thing I remember about sixteen was my anger. It burned at every edge of my skin, my eyes, and my brain. My life felt as if I'd chosen to sit in a caldron and cook with no escape.
There were nights when I worried about returning home, wondering if my stepdad was waiting with some new inconvenience to blame on me. So a lot of the times I didn't go home at all. I'd stay out with groups of people Dream looked down upon and smoked with them. Fucked around at skate parks with guys who only wanted something they'd never receive.
I remember Dream hating me then, rolling his eyes every time we spoke. Scoffing at my choice of clothes to cover the scratches from cement and bruises of anger. He didn't deserve to have to deal with all of my bullshit, he'd even spoken the words. And he was right, just because my world was falling apart didn't mean he had to put it back together. It wasn't his job. Now that I look at it, I find it was better that he hated me then. Better that he hated my temper and my act of trying to be alright. I never blamed him for it, I think I hated myself more than he did then.
Inevitably, we drifted. Dream eventually stopped rolling his eyes, or poking at my stolen jacket with a grimaced expression, more so because he stopped looking at me at all. It was all hockey and the people involved with it. New friends who had money as he did. Expensive luncheons I couldn't attend or even try to afford. Girls in Versace, boys with Rolex, food that cost more than the money I made in a week at my small job. Dream distanced himself so far away that by the time I realized I'd lost myself completely, I'd also lost Dream.
From then on I received glimpses of him, halfway conversations, and surface-level smiles. From then on, Dream has always had something better to do than deal with me. And since then I've excepted the fact because, in all seriousness, it was my own fault that we are no longer close. I think everything that went wrong with us has been my fault.
"Tired?" Dream's whisper voice brings on the feeling of early morning summer with him and his family. The annual camping trip we take every summer. I sink into myself a bit, shoulders relaxing for the first time in a while.
